Map Web Sites

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Sites

Below is a list of sites with a limited number of digitized Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps made available through various state and academic institutions. These are older maps now in the public domain. To see a large, beautiful, physical 2-volume set for Springfield from 1956, head down to the Library Center on So. Campbell to the local history rare book room. It's worth the trip.

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Company, established in 1867, compiled and published maps of U.S. cities and towns for the fire insurance industry to assess the risk of insuring a particular property. The maps are large scale plans of a city or town drawn at a scale of 50 feet to an inch, offering detailed information on the use made of buildings, their size, shape and material. Some residential areas are also mapped. The maps show location of water mains, fire alarms and fire hydrants.

This is a collection of 3,121 city maps produced by the Alabama Inspection and Rating Bureau (AIRB) of Montgomery, Alabama, and the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company of New York, New York. The AIRB maps are courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. The Sanborn Fire Insurance maps are courtesy of the W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library.

This collection of public domain maps was digitized from the printed maps held in the collections of the Smathers Libraries' Map & Imagery Library, on the campus of the University of Florida (Gainesville, FL).

The Sanborn Maps® database is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia as part of Georgia HomePLACE. The project is supported with federal LSTA funds administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Georgia Public Library Service, a unit of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.

The Sanborn Company designated the Indiana University Herman B Wells Library Map Collections as the repository for the original Indiana Sanborn paper maps. A joint project between Indiana University and the Historical Information Gatherers, Inc., provides digital color versions of the Sanborn maps to the Indiana Spatial Data Portal (ISDP). A 2011 IndianaView grant funded the archiving of the digital maps on the ISDP.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Muncie, Indiana Collection consists of 200 maps depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of the city from 1883 through 1911. Courtesy of Ball State University Libraries.

Courtesy of PennState University Libraries. "Penn State University Maps Library has a near complete collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for the state of Pennsylvania. The print collection can currently be accessed by contacting the Maps Library. The digital collection will continue to grow as we determine copyright status and as 1923 maps come out of copyright starting in 2019."

The Historic Pittsburgh Maps Collection comprises five series of maps helpful for studying and tracing the physical development and changes of the Pittsburgh area landscape. Courtesy University of Pittsburgh Libraries

Library of Congress owns a vast collection, but only some have been scanned and posted online. Search by state, and when the list of towns comes up, look for an * by the name to view the list of maps. Any digital versions will come up in the results.